148 LORD SHAFTESBURY

breaking faith with the factory operatives, we have no more confidence in
my Lord Ashley, Philip Grant, or any of their tools who have acted with
them, remembering the promise which my Lord Ashley has always held
out to the operatives employed in factories—' That he would die in the
last ditch/ That we, the delegates, take this opportunity of expressing
our utmost contempt and indignation to his Lordship, for the scandalous,
abominable and disgraceful manner he has manifested in having betrayed
the factory cause. And we also take this opportunity of ringing this
as the last death knell betwixt Ashley, his colleagues, and the factory
operatives, and bid them an everlasting adieu." 1

Ashley wrote in his diary: "They forget all my
labour of love in the middle course I took for their
welfare. I won for them almost everything ; but for the
loss of that very little, they regard me as an enemy." 2
If the younger Pliny was right this was human nature.
" Such is the disposition of mankind, the favour you
refuse cancels all you have conferred."

Was it very little, or were the workers justified in
feeling that they had been tricked ? Three years later,
in 1853, after Ashley had gone to the House of Lords,
Palmerston, then Home Secretary, passed a measure to
include children in the 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. range of hours.
Till that was passed it was clear that, however important
the establishment of the " normal day," and it proved
afterwards to have been very important indeed, the male
workers had lost seriously by the compromise.3 Their
position was difficult because, though the agitation
was conducted ostensibly for the benefit of women
and children, the men had always regarded it as an
agitation for a universal ten hours day. The House of
Commons would never consent to limit men's hours
expressly, but many Members did not object to a measure
which had as a consequence, though not as its avowed
object, the shortening of the working day for everybody.
Ashley, for example, could congratulate the men on
having more time for their allotments and recreation, in

1 Halifax Guardian^ August 3rd.

3 Hodder, II., 357.

* "The inspectors reported in 1850 that 257 mills were employing 3,742
children as assistants to males over 18, after the women and yoirag peraoni
had left off work."—Hutchins and Harrison, op, cit., p. 108.